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Destin Cretton captivated festival audiences with his short film Short Term 12 in 2008; now, five years later, he has expanded his film school thesis into a full-length feature. The result is at once heartrending, tender, and strikingly funny — just like, you guessed it, life. And that's the beauty of Cretton's film: its rawness, its honesty, its truth.
Hollywood.com spoke with Cretton about his personal experiences working at a foster care facility much like the film's Short Term 12 as well as finding the perfect cast — which includes Brie Larson, John Gallagher Jr., Keith Stanfield, and Kaitlyn Dever — to bring this intensely personal story to life.
Note: This interview contains plot spoilers for Short Term 12.Go see the movie — immediately — and then come back and read this.
Hollywood.com: I loved the movie, as I am sure you are hearing a lot today, and other days.Destin Cretton: It would be great if someone started off by saying, "I hated the movie. Here are some questions."
There is a movie I saw recently — thank God I wasn't doing the junket, because it would have started out like that! But I just wanted to start at the beginning. I was at the BAM Q&amp;A, where you said that this movie kind of sprung from your personal experiences. I'd love to hear about that, and then your process of turning those experiences into this movie.It was my first job out of college. I stumbled into this because I couldn't get a job anywhere else. I had a friend who was working at this place, doing overnights. He said they were hiring. I didn't know what I was getting into until I was in it. I didn't realize how intense it was going to be. How scary it was going to be. I was terrified for the first month. I was very similar to that novice Nate character in the movie — so naïve, so idealistic. In an unhealthy way. I quickly — well, not quickly — realized that the way that I was thinking about it was so wrong. That even though I did have good intentions, there was a part of me that felt like I was the savior, I was the one who was going to help, I was "above" these kids. That was my biggest lesson that I learned while working there. All humans are the same.
Working there was like holding a mirror up to myself, and seeing so many things about me that I had to deal with, and I had to work on, that I was struggling with. That showed me how similar I was to all these kids. Once I was at that place, my relationships with them became very real — once they saw that I was looking at them with equal human respect. Those questions and those things that I was dealing with stuck with me. That experience stuck with me. Still, it is imprinted with me. It stuck with me all the way through film school. Those four years later, when I did my thesis film — which was the short version of Short Term 12 — that was the first time that I tried to organize some of those thoughts into a cohesive story.
The short premiered at Sundance, and I won the Jury Prize, and took it around to festivals. The continued, repeated surprise of that experience was how many people were connecting to this world who knew nothing about it. And that was, I think, when I started to realize how universal these situations and emotions and themes that are wrapped up in this world are. And that was kind of an inspiration for writing it as a longer piece.
And how did you decide what to pursue further in the feature versus the short?A lot of it had to do with [the fact that] I just don’t like repeating myself. Just because it's boring. I don't want to do the same thing again. Mainly for my own entertainment, I guess, I change things. The most obvious change between the short and the feature is that the main character is a male supervisor in the short and a female in the feature. That one change just trickled through everything. Even scenes that are really similar to the short became brand new scenes. And the challenge of writing from a female perspective was terrifying enough to keep my interest. [Laughs] It felt like a brand new story at that point.
And you obviously gathered this incredibly talented cast together. Was it a relief to find everyone and find out they were awesome?I can't even tell you what kind of a relief it was. And I can't tell you how stressed out I was during the casting process. I knew from the beginning that the movie lives and dies with whoever we get. If we get the wrong people, the film wouldn't work. I was so stressed on some of these roles. Thank God we had [these actors]. Brie [Larson] was the first piece of the puzzle. And then John [Gallagher Jr.] came on. They both came on fairly quickly, which was a big relief. But then going through all of the other kids… Oh, it was so stressful. It wasn't like we had a ton of resources or we had a lot of time for casting. We did not, for any of these roles, have an A-B-C option. It wasn't like, "Oh, they're all pretty good!" It was just nobody, nobody, nobody, and then the perfect person comes in. And our schedules! It was like, if we don't figure out how to work her into our schedule, I'm screwed! And it was like that for most of the kid roles.
The kids were all fantastic.I know. I'm so proud of them.
I was surprised to look up Brie's age after the movie and see how young she was. The fact that she plays a teenager in The Spectacular Now — in which she is a contemporary of Kaitlyn [Dever]'s — is so crazy to me. Was it ever a concern that she would be too young for the role?There was definitely a concern before I met her. [Laughs] I had seen her in some interviews, and she is extremely mature. What is she, 23 now? So, interviews gave me hope. But she is so good at playing drastically different characters. And all of them have been teenagers, I think. All of them, right?
I think so. I don't know what she plays in Don Jon, but mostly teenagers.Mostly teenagers. And she's so good at it. So, that was definitely a wonder of mine until I Skyped with her and saw how smart she is. And thoughtful and introspective. Her insight into this character… I was immediately so excited to see what she would do.
Brie was telling me about the envelope of icebreaker conversations that you made for her and John before their first dinner. What inspired you to do that?I don't know. I did it for my previous film, where we also had to quickly create a family with three actresses and an actor, a brother and three sisters. And I did the same thing — I sent them on a hike with an envelope. It's just very specific topics to talk about, all related to the emotions or the themes of the movie they're doing together. It worked there a lot. Some of it is things they should really be talking about and that are really into the theme. Some of it is just the act of answering a vulnerable question in front of somebody. It creates trust and intimacy. Honestly, it's like, "I hope this works!" It takes really good actors to run with it and make it work, so I'm glad that they did. [Laughs]
No, it's a great idea! There are two things that are really interesting about this movie to me. The first is that, though most of the characters have happy endings it doesn't feel cheesy. Were you worried about giving everyone a happy ending?Yeah. It kind of depends on your definition of "happy." I do think that for this particular movie — I mean, the short film doesn't end happy, so I'm not like, "Every movie has to have a happy ending!" — for this particular story, it was important for me, personally, to end on the upswing. I think the theme of the movie is very apparent that it is not going to stay in the upswing. The movie is about the ups and downs of life. And that love is more than a feeling. And that love is not fleeting — love is walking through shit with somebody. I also, personally, believe that happiness is as much a reality as darkness and tragedy. In this world, working at that place, I had some of the saddest, most tragic moments with people there, and I also had some of the happiest, most blissful and hopeful moments there. I wanted to portray both as honestly as I could. The moments of bliss in this movie, I think those characters deserve them. I've got to give them this. I think that anybody can see that we're not saying that they're going to live a perfect life from here on out. I do think that there is so much hope in the human ability to choose to try. I think that's what the happy ending is for all these characters — they are choosing to try, and choosing to keep moving forward and survive. You know that they are going to continue going through shit and happy moments until they die.
Definitely. I was also very impressed by the fact that there were a few times in the movie where I felt like there was the potential for it to take one step too far into melodrama.Yeah, there's a lot of those moments.
But you resisted them every time! Which was incredible. The one that stands out in my mind is when Grace goes to Jayden's dad's house with the baseball bat — that could have gone very poorly. And then, obviously, Marcus could have not survived his suicide attempt. I was relieved and very happy that it resisted that. Were you ever tempted to go into that super heavy territory?Yeah, there's always the temptation.
Not that what you have isn't heavy...It is! But there's always the temptation to do too much. To think that an audience needs more. They need more intense music, or they need more explanation, or they need more tears — more of an obvious emotional thing. That's a huge temptation. That was a lesson that we constantly [learned] as we were showing the film to friends and then test audiences, rooms full of strangers, which we got to do through the editing process. We learned and relearned how smart audiences are. Any of them. Audiences that you wouldn't expect to be smart are so smart. Collectively. Their brains just unite and they understand subtlety. Even audiences that aren't used to watching indie films. We were constantly seeing that they don't need that music cue, they don't need that explanation. We just kept stripping things away. Which is the type of movie that I like to watch. There are still some things that we should have stripped away! [Laughs]
I don't know, I thought it was great. A theme that a coworker of mine noticed — that I didn't notice, but that I think is awesome — was how much sea life and ocean imagery is in the movie, what with the octopus story, Marcus' fish, and the aquarium. Was that conscious? Were you trying to build a motif with that?It kind of just happened. Maybe it was something I was weirdly obsessed with at the time. [Laughs] It kind of naturally came out, maybe a little too much. We pulled back on it. But I wasn't like, "This is going to be the symbol of our movie!" But there is a lot of natural connection to the idea… there are so many connections that I still see. We weren't consciously trying to create metaphors, but there are a lot of emotional connections between the idea of drowning and being surrounded by water. Depending on how you look at it, it can feel suffocating and horrible, or it can feel weightless and free. And also, the idea of being in a wide-open ocean and being in a tiny aquarium. I think all those themes are connected to themes in the movie.
I like it, and I thought it was subtle. And another thing that shows up again and again is the artistic expression that kids are using as an outlet. The music, Jayden's drawing, the bracelet that Grace makes. I'm wondering how you feel about artistic expression as an outlet.Thank you for asking that question! I think it's incredibly important. For anybody, I think it's incredibly important. Whether you think you're good at art or not, I think it's important to stay connected to who you were when you didn't care if you were good or not. You would just do it because, I think, it's a good thing for us to do. I've never met a kid who doesn't like to explore with their hands or explore creatively. For people who aren't good with words, or aren't so great talking out their feelings — and I know exactly what that feels like — I think art can be a way to do that. I've found it with a lot of the kids that I've worked with, that was a way that they chose to communicate. If you weren't picking up on that, then you'd miss a lot of what they were trying to say. But I think that's something that is… unfortunately, because so many people tend to see art as something for "artists" — I think everyone should be called artists or there shouldn't be that title — it can unfortunately be seen as an intimidating thing to do, or something for kids. But I think it's really healthy. It's as healthy as exercise and eating fruits. That's actually something that we're going to be encouraging through our website and our Tumblr. We're connecting with other organizations that are specifically targeting kids in the foster care system, but also just people, teens who would like to have a place to share personal art things that they're working on. A little gallery where you can show some of things where you can have positive interaction and encouragement. That's really important to me.
Short Term 12 opens in limited release Friday, Aug. 23, and nationwide Aug. 30.
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Here at Hollywood.com, we're not Katy Kats or Little Monsters. We're just fans of celebrities and music. With that said, we are not going to add to the vitriol and pit Katy Perry and Lady Gaga against each other. They are both equally talented, smart, beautiful, and savvy women that put on a great live show and release fun pop music, and we respect that. And to be perfectly honest, we'd give up our liver and probably an arm to be either of them for two seconds, so there's no hate in this post. We're alumni of the Tina and Amy School of Women in Entertainment, not a group of middle school girls scalping each other over boys or popularity. We're here to support, not tear down.
While both "Applause" and "Roar" are simple, mind-numbingly repetitive (I gave up trying how many times Katy Perry sings "roar" — it's at least twice as much as Lady Gaga says "applause," and I just can't handle it), and nothing earth-shatteringly new. Neither is better (or worse) than the other. Both songs are perfect to jam out to while driving or staying motivated at the gym. Both singles have one word titles from albums with one word titles. The two songs are even similar in how they make the listener feel: the music pumps you and and is empowering. Also, both of these women are using the back and forth between their dedicated and intense fan-bases to drum up publicity for themselves to the point that they have each ranked among the most popular topics in pop culture, and are likely laughing at all of this over tea or Bellinis with Anna Wintour somewhere. This circus will likely result in several hundred thousands of digital downloads for the women in the first week alone of each album's opening.
So what if fans or critics chose "Roar" over "Applause"? Or ARTPOP over Prism? This isn't math class. There's no right answer to the question of what song or which singer is better. You can like one better, but don't threaten to light a rival fan on fire or harass them on Facebook (Mother Monster said not to, guys). The Haus of Gaga is churning out music and merchandise at the same speed and quality as Katy Perry (who, presumably, gets the job done while wearing lots of velour and scarves alongside John Mayer and her cats). These ladies are probably friends. If not, well, they should be. Can we avoid another Britney-Christina situation and actually just support each other for a change? I'm pretty sure even Whitney and Mariah were buddies. There's room on Billboard's Hot 100 for both of them. As of 9 AM on Tuesday, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga occupied the first and second spots on iTunes (respectively), passing Robin Thicke, Jay-Z, and Justin Timberlake.
Let's remember that there's that special place in hell for women who don't help each other out. And if you're paying attention, both Lady Gaga and Katy Perry come out winners because all of this "competition" is just a lot of media hoopla to get these artists at the top of the charts. Both songs are fun to sing and dance along to, both are equally cheesey pop nouveau classics, and both are already on my iPod.
So please, stop threatening to light me on fire, and remember, we're all on the same team here.
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"Helen is a boy's girl. She's smart, she is bawdy, she is sexy, he is refined and obviously talented, but she's the original boy's girl. Helen is who she is; she is the age she is. I wish more women did that." Actor John Malkovich is a big fan of his sexy Red and Red 2 co-star Helen Mirren.

After last week's insanely badass ending of True Blood, we know you couldn't wait to watch Sookie terrorize Warlow with her lethal fairy-ball. And the latest True Blood episode, 'F**k the Pain Away,' brought all the pizzazz you Sooklow shippers – we definitely need to come up with a better celebrity couple name for Sookie and Warlow – have been craving.
So pop out your fangs and get ready to sink 'em into all the blood-soaked details from this week's suspensefully awesome episode.
Vampire-Killing Ball of LightAfter Sookie threatens Warlow with her "vampire-killing ball of light" he reveals that he loves her and that it's their destiny to be together. Holy twist! Who could've thought that the same dude who killed Sookie's parents could also love our dazzling Merlott's waitress?
Warlow tells Sookie that on the eve her parents died, the Stackhouse parents were intent on killing their own daughter — so he was actually the one who saved Sookie. Sookie squeals "bulls**t" as she zaps Warlow. Her attack strangely triggers something within Bill. We thought it was bizzaro enough when Bill bursts in to Sookie's home — but then Bill summons Warlow. Wait, I'm sorry, what?! Apparently, Billith is Warlow's maker. Now I'm even more confused…
Ah! The Scent of Fairy GoodnessFlashback to 3500 BC: We see Warlow lounging with his baby mama but he soon leaves her side to have nasty sex with Lilith. After Lilith gets a proper sniff of his fairy goodness, she f**ks and then turns Warlow, who proceeds to massacre his entire village. He lets Niall live but then returns to kill Lilith — well he tries to, but she's obviously still up and at 'em, doing her thing.
A Little Bit of Blood Goes a Long WayJess is a bloody-teared after killing all of Andy Bellfleur's fairy children. With all that fairy blood pumping through her veins, Jess launches herself onto Bill and kisses her maker, which feels like so wrong on so many levels. Andy shows up at Bill's and freaks seeing his dead kiddos scattered about. He finds one child still left breathing, gives her a drop of V, and thankfully revives her.
Rawr! What a CatfightSarah Newlin is still trying to convince Governor Burrell to not only send Willa to camp but to also take a cue from Beyoncé and put a ring on it. After getting flat-out rejected from Burrell, Sarah pops over to Jason's to save his soul… and (pardon my French) f**k the s**t out of him in the hottest sex scene like ever.
High on fairy blood, Jess also comes to Jason for some loving affection — but, finding Sarah there, she instead ends up in a catfight with Sarah. Bye bye, Jess — you're off to vamp camp. Gah!
Welcome to Vamp CampTara discloses to Eric that the vamp cops have snatched Pam away. So the two vampers turn themselves in to the vampire po-po thinking that, once at vampire camp, they can save Eric's protege. Eh, we're not so sure this is a smart idea, guys…
We then get a glimpse of camp, where Eric plays a shooting game of racquet ball while Pam gets forced into therapy. Willa meanwhile, while surely sulking about getting booted into her father's very own vamp camp, is at least treated to some swanky V.I.P. quarters.
In a twisted game later on, Sarah Newlin surprises Governor Burrell with Eric's captivity. And then the crazed blondie tries to force Eric and Pam into a game of gladiator. This camp is insane.
Peace Out, SookieSookie seeks her own therapy sesh with Lafayette where she unveils that she sort of believes that Warlow loves her. The two do some voodoo s**t to call on Sookie's parents and we see a flashback of Warlow asking Sookie's parents to let him make her his princess and turn her into a fairy-vamp like himself.
After getting spooked out by Warlow, Mr. Stackhouse believes the only solution is to kill off Sookie — which he tried to do on the fateful evening he and his wife passed away. Papa Stackhouse's spirit then hops into Lafayette's body to end Sookie's life like he failed to do while he was alive. And the episode hault with Sookie scrambling for air as she drowns. Dun dun dun...
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Actress Leah Remini has cut all ties with the Church of Scientology after falling out with religious leader David Miscavige. The former King of Queens star reportedly became embroiled in an argument with Miscavige over some of the group's strict policies and now she has decided to leave the organisation after 30 years as a devoted member.
A spokesperson for the Church of Scientology refused to confirm or deny the story, telling The Hollywood Reporter, "The Church respects the privacy of parishioners and has no comment about any individual Church member."
The news was first reported by the New York Post on Thursday (11Jul13), when a source told the publication, "It all began when Leah questioned the validity of excommunication of people. She is stepping back from a regime she thinks is corrupt. She thinks no religion should tear apart a family or abuse someone under the umbrella of 'religion.'"
Remini has previously been very vocal about her support of the organisation, which routinely receives bad press and counts Tom Cruise and John Travolta among its devotees - in 2001 she defended the Church in an interview with CNN.com, saying, "If somebody is going to get turned off about something because of what they read or heard, then that person's not smart enough to even enter a church. If you're really against something, then know what you're against."

Jim Carrey publicly announced that he has withdrawn his support from his upcoming film Kick-Ass 2, and will not be involved with its promotion. The actor, who portrays Colonel Stars &amp; Stripes, an ex-Mafia member turned masked vigilante, has decided that the violent nature of the superhero sequel conflicts with his standing sensitivity over tragedies like 2012's Sandy Hook shooting. Carrey tweeted over the weekend: "I did Kickass a month b4 Sandy Hook and now in all good conscience I cannot support that level of violence. My apologies to others involved with the film. I am not ashamed of it but recent events have caused a change in my heart."
Although the storyline's inclusion of a violent 11-year-old (Chloë Grace Moretz) has been met with controversy in the past, the nature of the film hadn't prevented the actor from signing onto the project in the first place, nor have any events since inspired any previous vocalization of conflict about his involvement. In March, Carrey opened up to MTV News about the relationship between the film's super-violence and his beliefs about gun control in the aftermath of the devastation in Connecticut:
"...my character is a guy that came from a violent background who is trying to turn it around and he uses a gun with no bullets in it. These are things I am considering now because I just feel like we don't cause the problem, but we don't help it much either. So, I am becoming more conscious of that. And I made Kick-Ass before all the things, the unfortunate shootings happened and stuff happened, and so that's kind of a little interesting blast from the past almost. But it's just going to be a great movie but I'm being careful with choices."
Mark Millar, the writer and creator of the Kick-Ass comic book series as well as the executive producer for the two films, is inevitably astonished about the comedian's sudden transition from big fan to disapproving criticizer. In a statement posted on Millar World a few hours after Carrey's announcement, Millar replies:
"First off, I love Jim Carrey. When producer Matthew Vaughn and director Jeff Wadlow called me up and suggested we do a conference call with him to talk about the sequel to the 2010 original I was genuinely excited. Like you, I love Eternal Sunshine, Man on the Moon and The Truman Show. Carrey is an actor like no other, an unpredictable force of nature who brings a layered warmth and humanity to his work as well as that unstoppable energy he's always been renowned for. He had lunch with Matthew around the time of the first movie and dug it so much he appeared that night on Conan O'Brien DRESSED as Kick-Ass, singing a duet with Conan dressed as Superman. Vaughn and I made a mental note to work with this guy as soon as possible as we're both huge admirers.
Cut to almost three years later and I'm sitting in a screening room in London watching what I think is one of Carrey's best-ever performances. I'd seen Kick-Ass 2 in many forms, but this was the absolute final cut complete with opening titles, music and a terrific post-credit sequence you're all going to love. I couldn't be happier with this picture. It's as good as the original and in many ways BIGGER as it expands upon the universe and really takes things to the next level. There are a lot of stand-outs in the sequel, every actor really firing on full cylinders and an amazing script that moves like a rocket. But Carrey in particular is magnificent. He's never done anything like this before and even from the trailer, with his masked dog sidekick specially trained to munch criminal balls, you can see that something really fun and special is happening here. Colonel Stars and Stripes is so charismatic and all his scenes are up there with Nic Cage's amazing turn as Big Daddy in the original... which made it all the more surprising when Jim announced tonight that the gun-violence in Kick-Ass 2 has made him withdraw his support from the picture.
As you may know, Jim is a passionate advocate of gun-control and I respect both his politics and his opinion, but I'm baffled by this sudden announcement as nothing seen in this picture wasn't in the screenplay eighteen months ago. Yes, the body-count is very high, but a movie called Kick-Ass 2 really has to do what it says on the tin. A sequel to the picture that gave us HIT-GIRL was always going to have some blood on the floor and this should have been no shock to a guy who enjoyed the first movie so much. My books are very hardcore, but the movies are adapted for a more mainstream audience and if you loved the tone of the first picture you're going to eat this up with a big, giant spoon. Like Jim, I'm horrified by real-life violence (even though I'm Scottish), but Kick-Ass 2 isn't a documentary. No actors were harmed in the making of this production! This is fiction and like Tarantino and Peckinpah, Scorcese and Eastwood, John Boorman, Oliver Stone and Chan-Wook Park, Kick-Ass avoids the usual bloodless body-count of most big summer pictures and focuses instead of the CONSEQUENCES of violence, whether it's the ramifications for friends and family or, as we saw in the first movie, Kick-Ass spending six months in hospital after his first street altercation. Ironically, Jim's character in Kick-Ass 2 is a Born-Again Christian and the big deal we made of the fact that he refuses to fire a gun is something he told us attracted him to the role in the first place.
Ultimately, this is his decision, but I've never quite bought the notion that violence in fiction leads to violence in real-life any more than Harry Potter casting a spell creates more Boy Wizards in real-life. Our job as storytellers is to entertain and our toolbox can't be sabotaged by curtailing the use of guns in an action-movie. Imagine a John Wayne picture where he wasn't packing or a Rocky movie where Stallone wasn't punching someone repeatedly in the face. Our audience is smart enough to know they're all pretending and we should instead just sit back and enjoy the serotonin release of seeing bad guys meeting bad ends as much as we enjoyed seeing the Death Star exploding. The action in Kick-Ass 2 is like nothing you've ever seen before. The humour, the characters, the heart and the set-pieces are all things we're very proud of and the only warning I'd really include is that it's almost TOO EXCITING. Kick-Ass 2 is fictional fun so let's focus our ire instead of the real-life violence going on in the world like the war in Afghanistan, the alarming tension in Syria right now and the fact that Superman just snapped a guy's fucking neck.
Jim, I love ya and I hope you reconsider for all the above points. You're amazing in this insanely fun picture and I'm very proud of what Jeff, Matthew and all the team have done here."
It seems like Carrey's sudden change of heart is a reflection of his dual personalities in Me, Myself &amp; Irene. Regardless of how he's feeling, Kick-Ass 2 will fire into theatres on August 16, with or without the star's support.
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Katy Perry has opened up about her high-profile relationships with ex-husband Russell Brand and on/off boyfriend John Mayer in a candid new interview with America's fashion bible Vogue. The pop star, cover girl for the July (13) edition of Vogue, tells the magazine she hasn't had any contact with the British comedian since he sent her a text message to ask for a divorce.
She says, "He's a very smart man, and I was in love with him when I married him (in India in 2010). Let's just say I haven't heard from him since he texted me saying he was divorcing me December 31, 2011."
The I Kissed A Girl hitmaker also suggests Brand was uncomfortable with her huge success, adding, "At first when I met him he wanted an equal, and I think a lot of times strong men do want an equal, but then they get that equal and they're like, I can't handle the equalness (sic). He didn't like the atmosphere of me being the boss on tour. So that was really hurtful, and it was very controlling, which was upsetting."
She also admits to initially blaming herself for the breakdown of their marriage: "I felt a lot of responsibility for it ending, but then I found out the real truth, which I can't necessarily disclose because I keep it locked in my safe for a rainy day. I let go and I was like: 'This isn't because of me; this is beyond me'. So I have moved on from that."
On the subject of Mayer, the 28 year old insists their romance is "over" but refutes the suggestion she dated him to exact revenge on Brand.
She says, "No, not at all. No, I was madly in love with him. I still am madly in love with him. All I can say about that relationship is that he's got a beautiful mind. Beautiful mind, tortured soul. I do have to figure out why I am attracted to these broken birds."
Vogue's full chat with Perry will hit newsstands on 25 June (13).

In celebration of Superman's 75th anniversary, and the release June 14 of the Son of Krypton's latest big-screen adventure Man of Steel, writer Larry Tye, author of Superman: The High-Flying History of America's Most Enduring Hero, Now Out In Paperback, contributes this essay exclusively to Hollywood.com on the unique qualities some of the actors who've played Superman — Kirk Alyn, George Reeves, Christopher Reeve, and Henry Cavill — have brought to the role.
Nobody is more All-American than Superman in his red cape, blue tights and bright yellow "S." So how is it that a Brit – a native of the Channel Islands and a product of a Buckinghamshire boarding school, with an English brogue no less – is donning the leotards and cape in the new Man of Steel movie?
Warner Bros' selection of Henry William Dalgliesh Cavill as our newest Superman seems ill-conceived if not profane, the more so coming just as America is celebrating its hero's milestone 75th birthday. But Cavill, a British heartthrob who played the First Duke of Suffolk on the Showtime series The Tudors, wouldn't be the first on-screen Man of Steel to defy convention and, in so doing, to soar higher than even his studio handlers dared dream.
Kirk Alyn, the original live-action Superman, was more a song-and-dance man than an actor, having studied ballet and performed in vaudeville and on Broadway in the 1930s and early forties. That's where he decided to trade in the name he was born with, John Feggo, Jr., for Kirk Alyn, which he felt was better suited to the stage. He appeared in chorus lines and in blackface, modeled for muscle magazines, and performed in TV murder mysteries in the days when only bars had TVs and only dead-end actors performed for the small screen. But he had experience in movie serials, if not in superheroes, so when he got a call from Columbia Pictures in 1948 asking if he was interested in trying out for Superman he jumped into his car and headed to the studio. Told to take off his shirt so the assembled executives could check out his build, the burly performer complied. Then producer-director Sam Katzman instructed him to take off his pants. "I said, 'Wait a minute.' They said, 'We want to see if your legs are any good,'" he recalled forty years later. They were good enough, and fifteen minutes after he arrived, Alyn was hired as the first actor to play a Superman whom fans could see as well as hear.
Alyn and his directors were smart enough not to try and reinvent the character that Bud Collyer had introduced so convincingly to the radio airwaves. “I visualized the guy I heard on the radio. That was a guy nothing could stop,” Alyn said. "That's why I stood like this, with my chest out, and a look on my face saying, 'Shoot me.'" His demeanor said "tough guy" but his wide eyes signaled approachability and mischievousness, just the way creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster had imagined their Superman a decade before. Alyn understood, the same way Collyer had, that kids could spot a phony in an instant. If they didn't think Alyn was having fun – and that he believed in Superman – they wouldn't pay to see his movies. His young audience, after all, didn't just admire the Man of Steel. They loved him. Superman was not merely who they dreamed of becoming but who they were already, if only we could see. The good news for them was that Alyn was having fun, and he did believe in his character in a way that these pre-teens and teens appreciated even if movie reviewers wouldn't.
In the 1950s, when Superman was gearing up for television, producer Robert Maxwell and director Tommy Carr screened nearly two hundred candidates who were sure they were him. Most made their living as actors, although some were full-time musclemen. Nearly all, Carr said, "appeared to have a serious deficiency in their chromosome count." So thorough – and perhaps so frustrating – was their search that the executives stopped by the Mr. America contest in Los Angeles. One choice they never seriously considered, despite his later claims, was Kirk Alyn, who had done well enough for the serials but had neither the acting skills nor the looks around which to build a Superman TV series. The search ended the day a barrel-chested B-movie actor named George Reeves showed up on the studio lot.
Maxwell's co-producer had recognized Reeves in a Los Angeles restaurant, seeming "rather forlorn," and suggested he come in for a tryout. He did, the next morning, and "from that moment on he was my first choice," said Carr. "He looked like Superman with that jaw of his. Kirk had the long neck and fine features, but although I like Kirk very much, he never looked the Superman Reeves did." His tough-guy demeanor was no put-on. Standing six-foot-two and carrying 195 pounds, Reeves had been a light-heavyweight boxing champ in college and could have gone further if he hadn't broken his nose seven times and his mother hadn't made him step out of the ring.
The Superman TV show, like other incarnations of his story, turned around the hero himself. Collyer, the first flesh-and-blood Man of Steel, had set the standard. He lowered and raised the timbre of his voice as he switched between Superman and Clark, making the changeover convincing. Maxwell's wife Jessica, the TV dialogue director, would follow Reeves around the set urging him to do the same – but he just couldn't master the switch. The result: a Superman who sounded just like his alter ego. They both swallowed their words. They looked and acted alike. There was no attempt here to make Clark Kent into the klutz he was in the comics. No slouching; no shyness. Reeves portrayed the newsman the way he knew, and that Jessica's husband told him to: hard-boiled and rough-edged, Superman in a business suit. The only differences were that Reeves would shed his rubber muscles and add thick tortoise-shell glasses with no lenses – that was the sum total of his switch to Clark Kent.
But it worked. It worked because fans wanted to be fooled, and because of the way Reeves turned to the camera and made it clear he knew they knew his secret, even if Lois, Jimmy, and Perry didn't. This Superman had a dignity and self-assurance that projected even better on an intimate TV screen than it had in the movies. Reeves just had it somehow. He called himself Honest George, The People's Friend – the same kind of homespun language Jerry and Joe used for their creation – and he suspended his own doubts the way he wanted viewers to. He looked not just like a guy who could make gangsters cringe, but who believed in the righteousness of his hero's cause. His smile could melt an iceberg. His cold stare and puffed-out chest could bring a mob to its knees. Sure, his acting was workmanlike, but it won him generations of fans. Today, when those now grown-up fans call to mind their carefree youth, they think of his TV Adventures of Superman, and when they envision Superman himself, it is George Reeves they see.
Christopher Reeve was an even less likely choice when producers set out to find the right Superman for their 1970s motion picture extravaganza. It wasn't just his honey brown hair and 180 pounds that did not come close to filling out his six-foot-four frame. He had asthma and he sweated so profusely that a crew member would have to blow dry his armpits between takes. He was prep school and Ivy League, with a background in serious theater that made him more comfortable in England's Old Vic than its Pinewood movie lot. He was picked, as he acknowledged, 90% because he looked "like the guy in the comic book . . . the other 10% is acting talent." He also was a brilliant choice. He brought to the part irony and comic timing that harked back to the best of screwball comedy. He had dramatic good looks and an instinct for melding humanism with heroism. "When he walked into a room you could see this wasn't a conventional leading man, there was so much depth he had almost an old movie star feeling," says casting director Lynn Stalmaster. The bean counters loved his price: $250,000, or less than a tenth of what Marlon Brando would get for the modest role as Superman's dad. Director Richard Donner asked Reeve to try on his horned-rimmed glasses. Squinting back at him was Clark Kent. Even his name fit: Christopher Reeve assuming the part made famous by George Reeves. "I didn't find him," Donner would say throughout the production. "God sent him to me."
Superman changed with every artist who filled in his features, writer who scripted his adventures, and even the marketers and accountants who managed his finances and grew his audience. Each could claim partial ownership. Actors like Christopher Reeve did more molding and framing than anyone and could have claimed more proprietorship. With each scene shot it was clearer that he was giving the hero a different face as well as a unique personality. Reeve's Superman would be funnier and more human – if less powerful or intimidating – than any who had proceeded him. He was more of a Big Blue Boy Scout now, in contrast to Kirk Alyn's Action Ace and George Reeves's Man of Steel. In the hands of this conservatory-trained actor, Supes was getting increasingly comfortable baring his soul.
Picking up the role and the mythos now will be English actor Henry Cavill, whose first appearance on the big screen was as Albert Mondego in The Count of Monte Cristo (2002). Can Cavill make us believe the way Reeve, Reeves, and Alyn did, and make us embrace a British-accented Man of Metropolis?
History suggests he can – provided he and Warner Bros. remember the formula that has served their hero so brilliantly for 75 years and counting. It starts with the intrinsic simplicity of his story. Little Orphan Annie and Oliver Twist reminded us how compelling a foundling's tale can be, and Superman, the sole survivor of a doomed planet, is a super-foundling. The love triangle connecting Clark Kent, Lois Lane, and Superman has a side for everyone, whether you are the boy who can't get the girl, the girl pursued by the wrong boy, or the conflicted hero. His secret identity might have been annoying if we hadn't been let in on the joke and we didn't have a hero hidden within each of us. He was not just any hero, but one with the very powers we would have: the strength to lift boulders and planets, the speed to outrun a locomotive or a bullet, and, coolest on anyone's fantasy list, the gift of flight.
Superpowers, however, are just half the equation. More essential is knowing what to do with them, and nobody has a more instinctual sense than Superman of right and wrong. He is an archetype of mankind at its pinnacle. Like John Wayne, he sweeps in to solve our problems. No "thank you" needed. Like Jesus Christ, he descended from the heavens to help us discover our humanity. He is neither cynical like Batman nor fraught like Spider-Man. For the religious, he can reinforce whatever faith they profess; for nonbelievers he is a secular messiah. The more jaded the era, the more we have been suckered back to his clunky familiarity. So what if the upshot of his adventures is as predictable as with Sherlock Holmes: the good guy never loses. That is reassuring.
There is no getting around the fact that the comic book and its leading man could only have taken root in America. What could be more U.S.A. than an orphaned outsider who arrives in this land of immigrants, reinvents himself, and reminds us that we can reach for the sky? Yet this flying Uncle Sam also has always been global in his reach, having written himself into the national folklore from Beirut to Buenos Aires. If Cavill acknowledges both sides of that legacy, the all-American and the all-world, then he should be able to reel back aging devotees and draw in new ones.
Larry Tye was an award-winning journalist at The Boston Globe and a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. A lifelong Superman fan, Tye now runs a Boston-based training program for medical journalists. He is the author of the New York Times bestseller Satchel, as well as The Father of Spin, Home Lands, and Rising from the Rails, and co-author, with Kitty Dukakis, of Shock. He lives in Lexington, Massachusetts, and is currently writing a biography of Robert F. Kennedy.
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Olivia Newton-John is urging fans to donate to a cancer facility in her native Australia in memory of her sister, who lost her fight against the disease last week (ends26May13). The Grease star's sibling Rona was diagnosed with brain cancer earlier this year (13), and the singer/actress called off her Las Vegas residency to spend time with her.
Rona passed away on Friday (24May13) at the age of 70, and Newton-John has shared her grief with fans in a post on her website.
She writes, "My beautiful sister Rona sadly passed on May 24th in Los Angeles. It was May 25th in Australia - which was our mother Irene's birthday. Rona died of a very aggressive brain tumour and mercifully suffered no pain.
"She was surrounded by the love of her four children - Fiona, Brett, Tottie and Emerson and, her wonderful friends. I will miss her forever - my beautiful, smart, talented, funny, brave sister Rona."
Newton-John has requested fans avoid sending flowers to mark Rona's passing and instead donate to the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre at the Austin Hospital in Melbourne, where a new program will be created in her sister's memory.
She adds, "In lieu of flowers the family would appreciate donations to the Olivia Newton-John Cancer and Wellness Centre where a brain tumour wellness program will be started in her name. Thank you all for your kind words of love and support."
The 64 year old, a breast cancer survivor, helped launch the multi-million dollar centre last year (12).

Film producer Jerry Bruckheimer and Sir Elton John are among the stars who have paid tribute to longtime publicity executive Denise Greenawalt following her death last week (22May13). The 52-year-old Walt Disney Studios chief died in her sleep at Huntington Hospital in California after a long illness.
During her 16-year tenure with Disney, Greenawalt developed publicity campaigns for The Lion King, Toy Story, The Little Mermaid, Aladdin, Pocahontas, The Princess Diaries and a number of Bruckheimer's films, such as Armageddon and Pearl Harbor, and the producer insists he owes her a great deal of his success.
A statement from Bruckheimer reads, "Denise was absolutely one of a kind, with her brilliant professionalism and enough energy to light an entire city. We worked on many films together, and Denise made a tremendous contribution to their success, just bubbling over with fresh and bold ideas. She will be missed by all of her friends and colleagues, and certainly by me."
Greenawalt was also a humanitarian, who volunteered for Elton John's Aids Foundation, and the Rocket Man adds, "She was an inspiration. The most beautiful and courageous woman."
A number of other celebrities have spoken out to offer their condolences, including Oscar-winning animator John Lasseter, who adds, "All of us at Pixar and Disney, and in the animation industry, have lost a true friend and a great supporter. Denise worked tirelessly and enthusiastically to publicise our films and always went above and beyond the call of duty to get the word out about our new releases.
"She was smart, funny and full of great ideas when it came to publicity. Denise was an important part of the animation renaissance at Disney."
Born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, Greenawalt began her career working at public relations firm Rogers & Cowan, before landing a job at Disney in 1986. She worked her way up the ranks to become the vice president of national publicity before retiring in 2002 due to health reasons.
She will be remembered during a memorial service in Los Angeles on Saturday (01Jun13).